Definitions
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.
- transitive verb To transform (a landscape) on another planet into one having the characteristics of landscapes on Earth.
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.
- verb science fiction To
transform theatmosphere (orbiosphere ) of anotherplanet into one having the characteristics ofEarth - verb
Earthscape
Etymologies
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition
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Examples
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Why don't we 'terraform' the Sahara desert before Mars?
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The Mars Society says that the Earth is a rotting, dying, stinking planet and that we must move our civilization to Mars and that Congress must appropriate funds to "terraform" Mars.
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Personally, I think it is easier, cheaper, and ultimately much more profitable to "terraform" asteroids and comets by hollowing them out and spinning them for gravity.
Terraforming Stephen D. Covey 2008
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And, if anything, I can easily imagine some variant of these techniques being eventually used to "terraform" (i.e. make more Earth-like) Mars and other currently inhospitable planets-think
Discover Blogs 2010
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Saying we need to rush back to the caves and saying we need to "terraform" the earth are different sides of the same coin: both are profound retreats from the responsibilities of our day, and both ignore the amazing opportunities we still have available to us to create a sustainable society.
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Vollmann's second strand examines Californians 'use of technology to literally "terraform" their environment, just as contemporary science-fiction writers were imagining the transformation of other planets.
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Once established on the planet, one of the society's suggested plans is to then 'terraform' Mars, to replace and replenish its atmosphere and return it to the more life-friendly environment it once was billions of years ago.
Home | Mail Online 2009
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It seems that a dying alien race sent out an arkship, looking for the perfect world to terraform and resurrect the aliens.
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It seems that a dying alien race sent out an arkship, looking for the perfect world to terraform and resurrect the aliens.
September 2009 2009
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If you were gonna terraform Mars and send animals to colonize the planet, would you send Grandma and Grandpa, Mom and Dad, or the virile teenagers old enough to survive but young enough to populate the colony?
bilby commented on the word terraform
"And there are NASA folk who dream of the day such devices will be in their toolkits. Not for tinkering with the Earth's atmosphere, but for re-engineering Mars'. By creating the mother of all greenhouse effects, the frozen red planet would be transformed into a relatively balmy, 15OC second Earth. This field of research, known as planetary engineering - or terraforming, if you're a science fiction buff - is of course in its infancy."
- Graham Phillips, How pollution might just save the planet, theage.com.au, 11 Oct 2009.
October 11, 2009
vendingmachine commented on the word terraform
"The Mars Society says that the Earth is a rotting, dying, stinking planet and that we must move our civilization to Mars and that Congress must appropriate funds to "terraform" Mars." See also terraformer.
August 4, 2015